Countries With the Most US Military Bases

About 1,200 Americans work at Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras, half of them service members of Joint Task Force-Bravo, which has been a military presence in Central America since 1983. The base also hosts the Honduran Air Force Academy.

Thule Air Base in Greenland is by far the largest U.S. military base overseas by physical size. It is also the northernmost base of any U.S. installation, 750 miles from the Arctic Circle. Thule is the headquarters of the 821st Air Base Group.

The Cooperative Security Location in El Salvador facility opened in 2000 after the United States closed bases in Panama the year before. The installation in El Salvador was needed to patrol the eastern Pacific region and provide logistical support to aviation units tasked with combating illicit activities in the region. Activity at the El Salvador base has increased since the United States shuttered military base operations in Ecuador in 2009.

Naval Medical Research Unit 3 operates out of Egypt’s capital of Cairo. The unit dates back to the 1940s, when President Franklin Roosevelt established the Typhus Commission to combat typhus, a disease that was ravaging American troops and civilians in North Africa during World War II. The Cairo office worked with British and Egyptian medical experts to fight the disease. The Navy established the research unit in 1946 and still works in Egypt today.

Because of its strategic location on the Red Sea between Africa and Asia, Djibouti is host to military bases of several countries, including the United States. The American base is Camp Lemonnier, and it is the largest U.S. permanent military base in Africa. The base hosts more than 4,000 personnel, many of whom are part of the Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa.